“Fuck,” I growled as I sucked a breath. I felt for what I’d walked into and realized it was a broken gravestone. The Warden obviously didn’t care about this cemetery. It was probably left over from when this place was a church. I bet the Warden was banned from demolishing it, or he’d have a haunting on his hands for disrupting the graves. It obviously wasn’t very sacred, since the gate had been left unlocked.
“Come on, Charlie,” Scarlet said, like she hadn’t noticed me stumble. “We’re almost there.”
Scarlet led me forward, until we came to a set of stairs. She guided me to sit. I could sense a wall ahead of us, but I couldn’t tell what it was— some sort of building set in the middle of the graveyard.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“It’s the mausoleum,” Scarlet told me. “Cool, isn’t it? I’ve always thought it was kind of spooky.”
Cool? All I could feel was the cold concrete beneath my ass. I had no idea what it looked like.
Ava would be describing the architecture to me. I felt kind of bitter that Scarlet didn’t make the effort.
Whatever. I opened my take-out container, and the scent of bacon hit my nose.
“Mm…” Scarlet breathed. “That bacon smells delicious. I bet it’s better than this synthetic blood they have us drinking.”
“If you like it, why didn’t you order some?” I asked, before popping a strip of bacon in my mouth.
“It doesn’t give me energy, but the salt still gets in my blood,” she said. “It’s unhealthy, but it just… it smells so good.”
I swear she was about to orgasm just at the smell. She was throwing herself at me, and with every attempt, it only got more irritating.
“Can I?” she asked, leaning toward me.
“Uh… sure?” I barely started speaking before Scarlet snatched a strip of bacon from my container. She moaned in pleasure, but I was far from pleased. Ava could take food off my plate all day, but when Scarlet did it, I went back to a different place. I was that kid jumping between foster homes again, always trying to save my scraps so the other kids wouldn’t take them from me. There’d never been enough to go around back then, and I didn’t want to share now. I set my container next to me, far away from Scarlet so she couldn’t reach my food.
She was still chewing her piece, savoring every bit, when she asked, “Do you ever just sit here and wonder what it’ll be like when you get outside these gates?”
I shrugged. “I used to.”
She must’ve been staring into the forest, because she turned away from me when she spoke. “To anyone else, the forest outside the fence would look frightening, but to me, it’s like home. It’s right there, yet I can’t reach out and touch it.”
“You miss home,” I remarked.
She turned back to me. “Of course I do. Don’t you?”
I sighed and poked at my food. “I don’t really have a home. I have nothing to go back to.”
“I’m sorry about that.” Scarlet sounded like she meant it, and for a moment, it felt like we were truly bonding.
The confession tumbled out of me. “I grew up in foster care. I never stayed in one place too long. Then, when I aged out of the system, I was so fucked up I never settled down. I had to do lots of tough shit just to survive.”
“I suppose that’s why you ended up here,” she said, sounding sad about my story.
“I’m not just talking about the criminal stuff,” I said, loosening up a bit. It was easier to talk about this, after I’d told Ava. “I used to sleep with women off the street, just to get a warm bed for the night. Mostly older women who took advantage of me. I don’t know if they took pity on me or found me attractive or what.”
“Well, youaresexy,” Scarlet said. “I can see why they wanted to sleep with you.”
“Yeah, but I just wanted to be something tosomeone, you know? Something more than just a one-night stand. I thought I found that here at the Institute, but… well, everyone knows that went down in flames.”
Scarlet shifted, sounding uncomfortable. “You’re talking about Ava-Marie?”
“Yeah.” My shoulders slumped. “We’re bonded, you know? In a weird way. I still don’t totally understand it.”
“I thought you guys broke up.” Scarlet’s tone wasn’t quite as soft anymore— like she was getting annoyed.
“We did, but it’s… complicated. We’re not together, but we’re still bonded.”
